Monday, February 22, 2010

The Disappointed Foodie

I vowed to myself that I would not use my "Local Greats" series to blast the Internet with more negativity. There's already plenty of it out there. I conceived of the "Local Greats" portion of the blog with the proverb "If you don't have something nice to say, say nothing at all" firmly in mind.

But...

I've had a few too many bad experiences recently to be completely silent. I have two principle complaints:

Gripe #1: I'm tired of choosing between good food and good service. Davis is small, so there are very few restaurants to choose from. The nicer establishments seem to cater to an older crowd. If you look even the slightest bit youthful, they don't give you the time of day. Result = snooty service. Or, if it's one of the less nice establishments, the food is generally good and the customers are fairly non-discriminating. Result = bad service because nobody cares anyway. Where, oh where, are the restaurants that boast BOTH great food AND great service?

Gripe #2: Vegetarians always seem to get the short end of the stick. For Valentine's Day my hubby and I went out for a fancy dinner. I checked online several times and never found a special Valentine's menu posted, so I scoped out the vegetarian options on the restaurant's regular menu. (Normally, there are many.) When we showed up for dinner, they presented us with a pricey, meat-laden, multi-course prix fixe menu. I inquired on whether they would be able to accommodate vegetarians for all of the courses since their limited menu wasn't posted in advance. They acted pretty put out, but they presented us with the handful of vegetarian options they were already offering. So we ate. And we enjoyed it (except for the cold soup!).

Then during the meal it became clear that everybody else was served additional courses for their prix fixe meal. So not only did we have no choice in what we ate, not only did we have to pay the price of a meat-laden multi-course meal (which costs the restaurant far more to make than a vegetarian meal), but the restaurant apparently had no problem eliminating an entire course from our menu after I specifically asked whether we would get all of the courses. Classy, right? But we didn't make a scene. We moved on.

Then when my husband received an email asking that he review the restaurant, he did. He was honest about what happened, but very fair. A few days later the restaurant owner emailed him saying that he should apologize for his review. Did you get that? The restaurant asked him to apologize for being honest about their service.

All I can is, WOW! These people really don't get what service is about, do they? And why are vegetarians second-class citizens at nicer restaurants? This is a college town in California where vegetarians are absolutely rampant! Do they really want to eliminate us from their clientele?

In the end, these gripes really disappoint me. I'm starting to feel like from now on I'm going to have to cook every nice meal that I eat. So, very, sad.